courage
by ShadowsTakeAll
Summary: She may not be psychic, but somehow she'd seen this coming. [or: Stiles and Lydia haven't spoken in a week and Kira takes it upon herself to fix it.]


**This. This is why I never get anything done. Last night I came on here to reply to some PMs and ended up writing yet another one-shot. My bad. Okay, so, things you need to know about it: set about a week after the events of 4x01, ignoring what happened in 4x02. Just assume a lot of crazy stuff went down in the intervening week. Actually that's probably all you need to know. The only warning I can think of is that there's a little bit of underage drinking, but for once I don't have to warn you guys about potential character deaths or torture. That's a nice change, isn't it? Anyway. So, yeah. Completed one-shot. Just a way for me to deal with everything that's happened in the last few episodes. Read, review, check out my other stories. You know how it goes. Enjoy!**

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/

Lydia Martin had never (despite rumors to the contrary) claimed to be psychic. Still, she should have seen this coming. She really, really should have seen this coming.

It had started with an innocent enough message – _my parents are away for the weekend, want to come over?_ – and a quicker-than-usual reply (blame it on loneliness or boredom or some combination of the two). There had been nothing incredibly strange at that stage, nothing to indicate how horribly wrong everything was about to end up.

When she'd turned up at Kira's house, pizza in hand and a smile on her face, she'd been completely unaware of the devious plan she was about to step into. Nor had she caught on when they'd ventured into Kira's room – _I have something to show you_ – and she'd seen the bottle of tequila sitting on her bed.

It had seemed like a good idea – _sure, why not?_ – to let off a little steam, especially after all of the craziness that had happened since Mexico. If possible it had seemed like more than the typical Beacon Hills level of crazy, and god, Lydia needed a rest.

What she didn't need was this. In fact, this was exactly the opposite of what she needed. She hadn't caught on until it was too late, until the plan was already in motion. Until the doorbell rang and Kira jumped to her feet.

"That'll be -" She cut herself off.

Lydia stared.

Kira blinked.

"Who is that?" Lydia asked, standing up slowly, already feeling the alcohol making its way through her body. "Kira, who did you invite?"

"Nobody."

The kitsune was gone before Lydia could react, and back before she could even sit down (or take another shot, because at this stage they were both equally appealing). It wasn't until she came back that Lydia understood the full extent of her plan, but by then it was too late. It was way, way too late.

Stiles stood in the doorway, his smile fading slightly. Lydia felt the tiniest glimmer of amusement; he'd been duped too. Of course he was neither a genius nor a banshee, so she really should have been able to figure it out before him.

But there was no time to dwell on it, because Kira nudged Stiles in the door – and then closed it behind him. So that she was in the hall, while Lydia and Stiles were locked in her room. Lydia watched comprehension dawn on Stiles' face – _what the hell is going on?_ – and tried not to find it _too_ amusing.

"You guys haven't spoken to each other since we got back from Mexico," Kira called through the closed door, "and I'm not letting you out of here until you work through it."

Stiles groaned. "Is she for real?"

"Yeah." Lydia shrugged, reaching for the bottle. She poured herself another shot, watching as Stiles tried the door and then the window, finding both firmly locked. He turned back to her, seeming mildly surprised to find her holding a bottle of tequila.

Lydia patted the bed beside her, and Stiles sat down. A little farther away than he would have before all of this, but he was still close enough to touch. She'd take what she could get.

"So what now?" Stiles asked. "I'm meant to be seeing a movie with -"

Her name hung between them, and Lydia felt that familiar unpleasant stirring of jealousy (which she still would not quite acknowledge, even to herself).

"Well." Lydia picked up Kira's empty shot glass and poured a generous measure of liquid into it. "We never got to do this in Mexico."

After only a second of hesitation, Stiles took the proffered glass. "Cheers," he said grimly.

Lydia may not be psychic, but she really should have seen this coming.

/

Stiles Stilinski had never been known for his subtlety or his suaveness, but the lack of these two qualities was never so pronounced as when he was intoxicated. Which, he was beginning to realize, he now was.

He was also keenly aware of the fact that he was in the process of getting drunk with _the_ Lydia Martin, someone he'd idolized since the third grade. Almost as soon as he'd realized that he also became aware of the fact that she'd been drinking before he came, and he took it upon himself to cut her off. She did not take this well.

"I'm fine, Stiles," she mumbled, but he managed to take the bottle from her and put it out of her reach. She looked at it longingly for a moment before switching her attention to him. He almost wished she hadn't. "You're not here," she said suddenly.

Stiles had been accused of many things in his time, but never had he been accused of being incorporeal. But that was Lydia – always full of surprises. "Am I invisible again?" he asked. Not one of his better jokes, but he was intoxicated enough to find it funny.

So was Lydia, because she wasn't quite quick enough to mask her laughter with a snort of derision. "You always do that," she said, shuffling up the bed so that she was resting against the pillows, her arms wrapped around her knees.

Stiles moved up so that he was still beside her, trying to remember just when exactly he and Lydia had become good enough friends for her to announce that he _always _does something. "What do you mean? What do I do?"

"That." She waved her hand vaguely, and Stiles felt dizzy trying to follow its movement.

He reached out and grabbed her hand, lowering it slowly back to her lap. "Lydia," he said, and she flicked her gaze up to him before looking away again. "What's going on?"

She took a long time to reply. Her eyes drifted closed and Stiles wondered if she'd fallen asleep, but then, still not looking at him, she said, "You're always making a joke out of everything. Even things that shouldn't be funny."

She had a point, but Stiles didn't know where it was coming from. He'd always thought of himself as the class clown – or the pack clown, rather – and he prided himself on his ability to respond to stupidity with sarcasm in two seconds flat. He'd never thought it was a problem. "What things?"

"Everything." She waved her hands again, and this time Stiles didn't reach for them. "You never take anything seriously. Like what happened with -"

She stopped talking abruptly, but it didn't take a genius (like her) to figure out where she was going with it. But the realization didn't hurt quite as much as the implications, which were slower to catch him. "What happened with the nogitsune," he finished for her. "What happened with Allison."

She flinched, and Stiles wished he could take it back. It was the first time he'd said her name in almost two months, and it didn't feel any better. The weight hadn't lifted, the pain hadn't lessened. He was still waiting for the day when he'd wake up and everything would feel remotely okay, but he had a feeling that day would be a long time coming.

Lydia's hands stilled and she clasped them in her lap, shifting ever so slightly away from Stiles. "You never say her name."

Somehow, despite the hell they'd been through the past few months, that still hurt. Stiles had been paralyzed and beaten up and all sorts of other horrible things, and somehow Lydia could still hit him with words that hurt more than that.

"You never say her name," Lydia said again, looking up at him. "It's like you don't even care."

The pain kept on coming, and Stiles was finding it harder and harder to breathe. It might have been easier if Lydia had accused him of killing Allison – that was nothing he hadn't thought a thousand times before. But she was accusing him of not caring, and that seemed even worse. "You really think I don't care?" He waited until she was meeting his eyes before he spoke again. "I _care_, Lydia. I care so much that it -" He faltered, his chest tightening; he couldn't tell if it was a panic attack or just the alcohol kicking in. "I still can't sleep at night. And when I do manage to fall asleep, you know what I dream about?" This time he didn't wait for her to respond. "I see her dying. I hear you screaming. I _feel_ the nogitsune killing her -"

"Stiles -" Lydia said, her voice somewhere between a plea and an admonition.

"No. You wanted to talk about this, so we're going to talk about this." Until this moment Stiles hadn't realized how much he needed to talk about it, or the reason why he hadn't – because he couldn't think of anyone who would listen. "The guilt I feel over her death is literally overwhelming. It feels like I can't _breathe_, Lyd. I haven't gotten a good night's sleep in months and every day I pray to god that -"

Lydia sat up straighter, and he could see the effort she was going to in order to focus on him. "That what, Stiles?"

His breathing was shallower now and he sank to the floor. This was definitely a panic attack. "I pray to god that I won't wake up," he finished.

Stiles may not be subtle, but he wasn't normally so blunt.

/

Lydia's heart jolted and she scrambled over to him, ending up on the floor beside him. It looked like he was on the verge of a panic attack, and even when she cupped his face in her hands he wouldn't look her in the eye.

"Stiles," she said, and then, more urgently, "_Stiles_."

He finally focused on her face, and her breath caught in her throat. There were tears – real, genuine tears – in his eyes. Until his moment she'd never seen Stiles cry; and until this moment, some small part of her had blamed him for Allison's death.

"Stiles, listen to me," she said, still holding his face and forcing her to look at him, just like she had that time the darach had taken his father. "Allison's death was not your fault. You hear me? It. Wasn't. Your. Fault."

Stiles could hear her voice, could make sense of the words, but he couldn't believe them. He couldn't.

"Stiles," Lydia said, and he was very aware of the pressure of her hands against his cheeks, "say it. You need to _say it_."

If it had been anyone but her, he wouldn't have been able to. But this was Lydia, the girl he'd been in love with for years, one of his closest friends and pack mates. His emotional tether. _Lydia_. "It wasn't my fault," he murmured, but it felt wrong. Like a lie.

"Again," Lydia commanded.

This time he focused on her eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to slow his heart rate. "It wasn't my fault," he said again, and it almost – _almost _– felt like the truth.

"Good," she crooned, and she even placed a kiss on the top of his forehead.

Stiles closed his eyes, breathing her in, feeling his heart slow down and his mind settle. Lydia leaned back, but she found herself still holding onto his hand. It took a few minutes, but eventually they fell back into a state of relative calm. The panic attack had been averted, some of the guilt had lifted, and Stiles looked almost like his old self.

He looked over at her, and she was sure the swirling in her stomach was more than just the tequila.

"That wasn't it," he said suddenly. "That wasn't why you weren't talking to me."

Lydia hesitated. "What do you mean?"

"You stopped talking to me after Mexico," Stiles said, puzzling it through. He was leaning against the bed, one hand on his knee and the other holding Lydia's hand. Somehow it felt right, even though everything about this conversation felt wrong. "Something must have changed then. What was it?"

This was exactly what Lydia was hoping to avoid, but somehow she'd known it was inevitable. She didn't have to be a genius (or psychic) to know that. "You're not here," she said again, and this time she thought that Stiles understood. "I don't feel like I can talk to you anymore."

Stiles nodded, trying not to show just how much he hated himself. He'd never meant to neglect her, he really hadn't. He'd never meant to hurt her. "It's because of what happened in the desert," he guessed, and she nodded. "Because I was going to run off after Malia."

"No." Lydia shook her head; maybe he didn't get it after all. "I get that – you wanted to stop her from doing something stupid."

"Okay." Stiles ran a thumb along the back of Lydia's hand, finding it strange that this didn't feel disloyal. It had never felt like this with Malia, not really. "So what was it then?"

Lydia bit her lip, and then she came to a decision. "I told you I was terrified," she said at last. "And you told me..."

"I told you to be less terrified," Stiles finished, and then he got it. And he felt horrible. "You thought I didn't care about _you_?"

It sounded stupid and selfish when he said it, but Lydia couldn't stop herself from feeling it. "You used to be the one I could turn to for reassurance," Lydia said. "You always believed in me, and I thought… I thought you stopped."

Stiles felt his heart shudder. He'd never meant to hurt her, and somehow he'd managed to anyway. He had to fix this. Still holding her hand, he shifted his position so that he was facing her. "Lydia, I never stopped believing in you." Without the aid of alcohol it would have sounded melodramatic, but by the way Lydia's expression softened he could tell it sounded right. "I told you to be less terrified because I knew you could."

She paused. "What?"

"Do you know what Ambrose Redmoon said about courage?"

"That it's not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear," Lydia quoted promptly. Then she let the words sink in and she felt some of the ice around her heart begin to melt.

"Exactly. You've always been the kind of person who can rise above their fear and get things done," Stiles said, his words passionate although slightly slurred. "I needed you to be less scared because _I_ was so terrified. You're my emotional tether, and you're one of the bravest people I know. If you couldn't keep it together, what hope did I have?"

A long silence followed his words, and then Lydia sighed. "I'm sorry," she said, resting her head against his shoulder.

Stiles wrapped an arm around her shoulder, knowing that, as Kira had told them to, they'd worked through it. "I'm sorry too," he said, planting a gentle kiss on the top of her head.

Things weren't fixed between them, exactly, but this was a start.

And god knew they had to start somewhere.

/

An hour later, when it had been quiet for a while, Kira slowly opened the door to her room and looked inside. They were both lying in her bed, Lydia with her head on Stiles' chest, Stiles with his arm around her shoulders. For the first time in a long time, it seemed that they would both get a good night's sleep. The kitsune retrieved the bottle of tequila, rested a blanket on top of both of her friends, and left them alone. She couldn't stop a smile from spreading across her face as she closed the door behind her.

Kira may not be psychic, but somehow she'd seen this coming.

/

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**I'm really digging the Lydia/Kira friendship, and so totally believe Kira's a secret Stydia shipper (and now we all know that Lydia's a not-so-secret Scira shipper). And I'm a sucker for any kind of drunk Stydia situation; I originally intended this to be slightly lighter, but then I just rolled with it because there's a lot of stuff they haven't talked about on the show, so I figured I may as well explore some of the grief/guilt/that kind of thing. Also: that Stalia kiss in the premiere made me so angry because that is totally a Stydia thing, so this is my way of rectifying that. ****Anyway. Hope you enjoyed this little fic, and I hope to see you in the reviews. **


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